PUBLICATION: | National Post |
DATE: | 2002.07.09 |
EDITION: | National |
SECTION: | News |
PAGE: | A1 / Front |
BYLINE: | Robert Fife, Ottawa Bureau Chief |
SOURCE: | National Post |
DATELINE: | OTTAWAInvestigations; Canada |
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MP raises prospect of Liberal self-dealing: 'Kick-forward' scheme: Party dismisses potential abuse of sponsorship money
OTTAWA - A New Democratic MP says the Liberal government may have received so little in return for the sums it spent on contracts related to its controversial sponsorships program because much of the money was reserved for later use by the party itself.
Pat Martin, the MP for Winnipeg Centre, says he will pursue that explosive hypothesis during a closed-door meeting of the House of Commons public accounts committee today.
Two former senior bureaucrats at the centre of the sponsorship controversy are to testify before the committee today.
Charles Guite and Pierre Tremblay were accused by Sheila Fraser, the federal Auditor-General, of breaking "just about every rule in the book" when they were running the sponsorship branch at Public Works and Government Services.
Ms. Fraser said there was no evidence of value for money in the work done. "The government did not obtain all of the services for which it paid."
The Auditor-General's findings have led to at least seven RCMP investigations into the payment of millions of dollars of government funds to Quebec communications companies with strong Liberal ties for work related to the sponsorship program.
Mr. Martin posits a scheme -- what he calls a "kick-forward scheme" -- in which a communications company would, for example, get a sponsorship contract worth $500,000. The company would provide services worth some small fraction of that amount, and set the rest aside.
The Liberal party could later draw on those "credits" to have work done by the companies for the party itself.
Mr. Martin thinks this might explain why in some cases the only thing Ottawa got for contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars was reports that appeared to duplicate one another and later went missing.
Mr. Martin said he will ask Mr. Guite whether he was ordered by his political bosses to run such a scheme. "I don't believe any senior bureaucrat would jeopardize his career and his job by breaking all the rules unless he was directed to do so by somebody higher up. We are hoping when they find themselves on the hot seat, they will rat them out," Mr. Martin said.
Terry Mercier, national director of the Liberal party, dismissed Mr. Martin's hypothesis, saying the party must account for all its expenditures to Elections Canada. Francoise Patry, the president of the Quebec wing of the Liberal party, also dismissed the notion.
Michel Frechette, a spokesman for Groupaction Marketing, one of the Montreal-based firms at the centre of the controversy, also denied any of the $1.6-million of sponsorships funds given to his firm were used to help out the Liberals electorally.
John Williams, chairman of the public accounts committee, said MPs want to know whether there was political interference in funnelling $70-million in commissions and contracts to Montreal-based firms to organize sponsorships of cultural and sporting events over the past five years. Most of the firms have donated generously to the Liberal party.
"It is not our role to get ourselves involved in a criminal investigation, but we are concerned about the amount of taxpayers' money that has been lost, misspent, spent with absolutely nothing in return," Mr. Williams said.
"Why did an environment become so poisoned and out of control that it allowed individual bureaucrats to spend millions of dollars for absolutely no return and there is always this connection between donations to the Liberal party and people handling these large amounts of taxpayers' money."
Mr. Williams, an Alliance MP, said the witnesses are entitled to parliamentary privilege so their testimony cannot be used against them by the police or courts.
Their testimony will also be kept secret for three years or until legal proceedings are completed. It is not known whether the two men, who will be accompanied by their lawyers, are being investigated by the RCMP.
"We want the testimony under wraps because we do not want to jeopardize any court cases because we do know there are ongoing police investigations," Mr. Williams said.
Mr. Guite was a long-time executive director of the sponsorship branch of Public Works and Government Services before he was replaced by Mr. Tremblay, another former director who held the position until last year.
Mr. Guite has retired from the public service. Mr. Tremblay remains a senior bureaucrat. He is a former chief of staff to Alfonso Gagliano, the disgraced former public works minister, now Canada's ambassador to Denmark.
Mr. Tremblay and Mr. Guite are appearing separately in morning and afternoon meetings of the committee. Ms. Fraser will attend the sessions to defend her damning May report on three contracts worth $1.6-million that the sponsorship branch awarded to Groupaction between 1996 and 1999 to boost government visibility in Quebec.
Groupaction, which donated $70,000 to the Liberals over several years, is being investigated by the RCMP for its handling of the sponsorships. In one case, the company was paid $559,000 for a report that Ms. Fraser's auditors could not find.
In another case, Montreal-based Communication Coffin charged $116,000 to prepare reports explaining how it spent an earlier $320,000 in federal funds for advertising and other services at two car races in Quebec. The Coffin reports could not be found in federal files. The RCMP is investigating.
The opposition parties have been demanding a full judicial inquiry. The government has promised to demand refunds for misspent money and to ban private advertising firms from administering the program. Instead the government will pay sponsorship money directly to community and cultural groups that qualify, beginning with events scheduled for July 22.
